


Upon the Shore, Beneath the Bridge

by azephirin



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Antwerp, Bathing/Washing, F/M, Fights, First Time, Florence | Firenze, Future Fic, Italy, Paris (City), Pisa, Post-The Dark Knight Rises, Sharing a Bed, thieves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-08
Updated: 2012-08-08
Packaged: 2017-11-11 18:26:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/481522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azephirin/pseuds/azephirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Let's meet tomorrow if you choose upon the shore, beneath the bridge that they are building on some endless river.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Upon the Shore, Beneath the Bridge

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to [](http://katomyte.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**katomyte**](http://katomyte.dreamwidth.org/) for aiding, abetting, and initial feedback, and to [](http://lousy-science.livejournal.com/profile)[**lousy_science**](http://lousy-science.livejournal.com/) for the final beta. This story contains a diversion from canon that resulting from my mishearing of a couple of lines of Alfred's dialogue during the movie, which I saw over the course of a few days without Internet access. By the time I was able to fact-check, I'd already written most of the story, and I liked that bit the way it was. It's not a major plot point, but you'll probably notice it when you get there. _Caveat lector_ if such things bother you. Title and summary from "[The Stranger Song](http://www.leonardcohen.com/us/music/essential-leonard-cohen/stranger-song)," by Leonard Cohen.

In Dublin, they share a narrow bed in a hostel in an old townhouse north of the Liffey. It’s a dormitory-style room filled with gap-year travelers and university students; she’s older than many of them and he’s older than all of them.

He’s almost decorous with propriety, the length of his body a tense, careful line. But he sighs and relaxes when she runs her hands up his back, and she can feel him shiver when she kisses the nape of his neck, lightly, just enough of a press of lips for him to feel their warmth against his skin.

Selina Kyle falls asleep with her arm around Bruce Wayne and a smile on her face.

+||+||+

In Paris they’re on the top floor of an old building in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The elderly proprietress says that the only room left is a single. Selina smiles and says that they don’t mind. The old woman winks and sends them up six flights of a winding staircase; the building is too old to have an elevator. “You are young,” she says in heavily accented English. “You have— _comment dit-on_ —stamina.”

Bruce actually blushes, and Selina laughs.

The room is small but clean, with a window whose shutters open outward like something out of a movie, where a girl would fling them open and sing a happy song to the world. (They would also be quite handy for pushing aside and scaling the wall of the building, and Selina’s pretty sure that Bruce is thinking the same thing.)

It’s a sunny day, cold but not bitter, and they walk along the Seine and peruse the bookstalls. Nothing about either of them suggests that they are anything besides a couple from America travelling on the off season. Selina knows a smattering of French, mostly enough to sound cultured at cocktail parties; Bruce’s vocabulary is rusty but his accent is prep school–perfect.

Later, Bruce makes the motions of sleeping on the floor, and Selina realizes that he’s serious. She rolls her eyes. “Don’t be stupid,” she says, and pushes him toward the bed just hard enough to let him know that she’s serious, too. His decorum is still precise, but when she kisses him, his mouth opens under hers without hesitation. She’s washed off her makeup, and her hair is down for the night; it falls forward to curtain both of them in soft darkness. Bruce tangles his hands in it, and she slides hers up his chest and underneath the ratty T-shirt he wore to sleep in. She can feel scars, hard muscle, and the coarse curl of chest hair; there are probably bruises, too, almost healed and barely visible.

He’s less hesitant once he knows he has permission: he circles his fingers over her nipples through the silk of her nightgown; then, when she squirms against him, he pushes it up to raise his head and put his mouth there, licking, even biting. He rolls them so that she’s on her back, so that he can trace his fingers lightly over her pubis, covered with light blue silk, and she arches up to let him pull the bikinis down, though not until she’s got his boxers off, too. Fair’s fair, after all.

He touches her gently, which she’d have expected, but teasingly, which she wouldn’t. She swears at him and he grins; she kisses him hard and moans into his mouth.

Inside her, he’s hot and thick, and she wraps her legs around his hips to urge him the way she wants him. They’re both quiet when they come, and he buries his face in her shoulder and holds her close until their breath has evened again; then he kisses her again , and he’s smiling, just a little.

She doesn’t leave while he’s asleep, but it’s a near thing.

+||+||+

In London someone tries to mug them, and because they both start laughing, he almost gets the better of them at first.

Then Bruce says, “Really?” and immobilizes him, and Selina rids him of the sad excuse for a knife that he’s carrying—she holds it up, looks at it, looks at its erstwhile wielder, and repeats, “Really?”—and they deposit him at the nearest police station.

He’s carrying several wallets, which Selina argues that they should keep. “They’re ill-gotten gains,” she says, “and we need the money.”

“They belonged to someone before he got hold of them,” Bruce argues back, “and they should be returned.”

She sighs dramatically and hands them over, but not before pocketing the cash from the lizardskin one. The guy had a photo of his family between two business cards for prostitutes. Douchebag. And besides, they really do need the money.

+||+||+

In Antwerp, she deposits Bruce in a bookstore, pickpockets a diamond merchant, and installs both Bruce and herself in a four-star hotel. He’s gotten access to the accounts he hid away, so they’re living better now, but she is sick of fucking hostels, and in any case he’s not her sugar daddy.

Bruce tries to remonstrate with her about how she got the money.

“Do not start with me,” she informs him. “First, this came from a guy who makes his money by brokering blood diamonds to small-potatoes dealers who had children cutting them. Second, I am tired of hostels, and I want a clean shower. Third—well, there is no third. I think points one and two were salient enough.”

He’s not happy with her, she knows, but fuck him. She checks them into the De Witte Lelie, then stalks into the bathroom, sheds her clothes, and descends into the bathtub. It’s deep, and the water is almost too hot to stand. It’s maybe the most amazing thing she’s ever felt. Better than silk, better than sapphires, better than ripping off that arms dealer in Moscow.

Bruce comes in after a while and sits down next to the tub. He doesn’t say anything, but when he extends a hand, she takes it. She sits up a little and scoots forward. “Get in,” she says.

He doesn’t protest, and he takes off his clothes, folds them carefully, and sinks in behind her. He sucks in a breath at the heat of the water, but she feels him relax behind her.

She starts to drift off after a while, lulled into sleep by the warmth of the water and the solidity of him behind her. She shakes herself alert again: he’s still awake, and though she’s slept beside him before, she always made sure he dropped off first, made sure she stayed wakeful and watchful—it’s how she’s always been, ever since the orphanage—

“It’s alright,” Bruce says, brushing her hair back from her face. “You’re safe. Go to sleep.”

She turns, splashing water over the side of the tub, and faces him. “What would you know about that?”

“Not as much as you do, probably, but enough,” he says; he doesn’t try to touch her, but his voice is steady and even, unchanged.

She stares down at him for several silent moments; he doesn’t speak or move, but he meets her gaze unflinchingly.

She turns again, finally, to settle against him. His arms come around her, and she allows them.

Selina doesn’t sleep, but she rests curled up against his shoulder, in the warmth of the water and of his body.

The next morning, she takes the rest of the money from the douchebag’s wallet, changes the pounds into dollars, puts them into an envelope, and addresses it: _Jennifer Robinson, 8 Orchard Street, Gotham City, GO 10000 USA._

There’s no return address, but Jen will know.

+||+||+

In Florence, they get a little apartment. It’s not much to look at, just a kitchen with an improvised wall separating it from the bathtub, a bedroom, and a small living room, but it’s nice to be able to unpack, to put her things in a dresser, to hang her scarves on the drawer pulls and her necklaces on nails in the wall.

Except for Bruce’s mother’s pearls, which Selina keeps wrapped in a silk scarf.

Bruce, with his gift for languages, picks up Italian quickly from soap operas and newspapers, then finds a job on a construction crew. He learns how to lay bricks and hang sheetrock, and comes home at the end of each day dirty and tired but, as the days go by, happy. He teaches Selina the filthy jokes and curse words his coworkers pass around.

Selina goes to the Biblioteca Nazionale with full intent to get a card and borrow like a normal person. However, upon learning that the rules for checking out books are stringent and byzantine, and that they don’t lend out CDs or DVDs at all, she lifts a “teach yourself Italian” textbook and its accompanying CDs. But she leaves a few euros in its place—not a theft, she decides, but a rental. She hides the set from Bruce, works her way through it, and goes back to the library to replace it on the shelf and take the next textbook in the sequence. Yet again, she leaves a few euros to complete the transaction. It takes a while—the language comes much more slowly to her than it did to Bruce. Fucking prep school asshole with his fucking preadolescent language instruction. She studies every day after he leaves.

When she can understand the news anchors and when the hawkers at the market don’t blink at her accent, she lifts a suit and some makeup from the Chanel store, pulls her hair back into a neat chignon, puts on Martha Wayne’s pearls, and goes out to find a job as Serena Kelton, born and raised in Toronto, who spent a year in Florence as a university student and always wanted to return. She studied art history at McGill, and yes, she’d love to work in a gallery; it’s really not fair to rely on her boyfriend for their sole income. Of course she can start Monday.

+||+||+

They’ve been in Florence about eight months when Bruce says that he wants to go to Pisa.

“OK,” Selina says; she wouldn’t mind seeing the tower, and they haven’t done a lot of travelling around Italy despite having settled here. They spent a couple of days in Rome early on, but that was it. “I can ask Annamaria for a Saturday off.” It’s only about an hour away.

“We should stay a few days,” Bruce mumbles, not meeting her eyes.

Now that’s weird. “If I can get the time off,” Selina says, and tries to stare him down, but it’s like staring down Batman, which is almost always a lost cause. Maybe Bruce went to Pisa with his parents. He’ll either tell her or he won’t, and generally it’s best not to inquire about the Waynes unless he brings it up.

There’s a specific hotel where Bruce wants them to stay, which is an additional surprise—first, that he has a preference at all, and second, that the place is as luxurious as the Web site makes it out to be. Well, then. Selina buys a hat from Paolo, who owns a millinery a few shops down, and steals some resort wear from La Rinascente—but only after they treat her exceptionally rudely when she goes in to try to buy what she wants. She includes some for Bruce, too, because he dresses like a hobo if left to his own devices, and the hotel doesn’t seem like the type of place to allow that. He’ll disapprove, but whatever. If he feels that strongly about it, he can take himself shopping for some decent clothes. Or suggest a less snooty hotel, but frankly Selina is just fine with the upscale accommodations. They stayed in enough shitty hostels.

It’s a normal thing to do, to go on vacation with the man with whom one lives. She’s read about it in books, seen it in movies, overheard it in conversations. People do this. But she hasn’t, before.

She buys a handbag from Carmella and Guillermo, Annamaria’s oldest daughter and her husband, who run Guillermo’s family’s leather shop on Via della Vigna Nuova. The store has been in the Angelini family for generations. Selina buys a novel from the English-language bookstore—the train ride isn’t long, but having a novel to read seems like the thing to do—and then a dress from a shop that Carmella recommends. She’ll need something to wear to dinner.

She unlocks the door, sets down the bags, and immediately hears from Bruce, “Jesus Christ, how many stores did you buy out?”

Selina just arches an eyebrow and begins to take out the things she bought. “Would I rather I had stolen this?”

“I’d rather you didn’t spend a week’s pay on things you don’t need.”

“We’re going on a trip to a nice place,” Selina says, “and I’d like to have some reading material on the train. In fact, I’d like to have some reading material now,” she adds, and walks deliberately into the living room, sits down, and opens her new book, even though she had planned to save it for the trip.

In the ensuing days, his moods get worse. She hates closing, but she actually volunteers for it, because apparently Bruce is having dead-parent issues, refusing to bring them up with her, and acting like a dick instead. This is why she worked alone for so long, Selina thinks as she sweeps the expansive hardwood floor and cleans the front windows. All she had to deal with was herself.

She walks home and unlocks the apartment door to find Bruce tenderizing a piece of meat like it’s the Joker’s face. When Bruce cooks, it signifies one of two extremes: he is happy and would like to share it with the world, or he is in an epic snit and wants an excuse to beat the crap out of something.

Great.

She goes into the bedroom, takes off her Tom Ford dress (the socialite from whom she liberated it did not appreciate its clean lines and precise tailoring), hangs it up carefully, and changes into jeans. Then she goes back out into the kitchen, takes out the tarragon and sage, and puts them next to Bruce’s elbow. Then she pours a glass of wine for each of them. She has a feeling she’s going to need one. Or three.

“So do you want to tell me what’s actually going on?” she says.

“I’m making dinner.”

“No, you’re not. You’re using the fact that we might eat that as an excuse to bludgeon something that’s already dead. And if you keep hitting it, it’s going to be inedible.”

He looks up at her but says nothing; he does, though, go to wash his hands and drink some of the Sangiovese in the glass closest to him. But then he just stares down at the cut of beef again.

“So you're not going to tell me,” Selina says, “and I guess I’m just supposed to intuit that we’re going to a place where you used to travel with your parents.”

He picks up the mallet and starts hitting their alleged dinner again. “My parents and I never went to Pisa.”

“Fine. Then I guess I’m just supposed to intuit why you’ve been an increasingly tremendous asshole since we made the plans.”

“Look, if you don’t want to go—”

“I don’t care whether we go or not! I could just as happily use this weekend to work and make legitimate money, which you care so much about, rather than spend several days in a hotel with you and your dramatic moods.”

“Maybe I’m just worried that we’ll get arrested and deported for larceny.”

“OK, you know what? You can go by yourself. And if I stay here much longer, I might take that mallet and mistake your face for that piece of meat, so I’m going to Annamaria’s.”

Annamaria lets Selina yell, half in English and half in Italian, about what a _miserabili pezzi di merda_ her boyfriend is; she gives Selina some veal and another glass of wine, then beds her down in the room belonging to her youngest daughter, who’s away at university in Bologna. Though Marcelina is gone most months of the year, the room still obviously belongs to her: the movie posters, the books, the mementos, the pink-flowered bedspread and frilly pillows are clearly those of an adolescent girl.

Annamaria kisses Selina’s cheek and leaves her alone, and Selina examines the dresser and vanity. The perfumes are young—no doubt the reason a barely adult woman would leave them when she left home for the first time—and the jewelry is valuable but old-fashioned, the sort of thing that would be passed down from a grandmother or great-grandmother, and cherished but not taken to university. The stones are big and the old-fashioned settings a little gaudy by today’s standards, but the metals are smooth and the gems, as far as Selina can tell without a glass, flawless. Probably local: if you live in Florence, why shop away from home for your jewelry?

Selina knows she’s had too much wine because she’s suddenly blinking back tears at the simple and unthinking trust: that she can be left in this room and she will disturb nothing, take nothing that is not hers.

She fingers the heavy heirlooms one last time, then leaves them lying in their satin-lined box.

+||+||+

The next morning, Selina goes into work with Annamaria. Around noon, Selina’s coming out of the back when she sees Annamaria staring with a ferocious glare at something—someone. That someone is Bruce, who is sitting in one of the guest chairs near the door and looking penitent, although apparently not penitent enough for Annamaria. He must have left the site over his lunch hour.

Selina almost spits out a frosty, “Can I help you?” but Bruce did brave Annamaria’s wrath, so that earns him a few points. Selina sighs and sits down in the chair next to his; Annamaria throws him one more dirty look and then makes herself ostentatiously busy on the other side of the gallery.

“Hi, Luke,” Selina says—it’s the name he picked for himself, short for Lucius.

“I thought you left,” he says, and she looks at him for a confused moment, because manifestly she had.

Then she realizes what he actually means. “I told you I was going to Annamaria’s,” she says; her voice is steady but then her gaze skitters away to the Paladino on the wall across from them. “And I made that decision a while ago. Not unless you do something like fuck another woman. Or another man.”

“No other women,” he says quietly. “Or other men.” There’s another pause, and his voice lightens. “No cows, chickens, or other barnyard animals,” he adds, deliberately needling.

“That’s disgusting,” Selina tells him. After another moment, though, she turns her hand palm up, and he takes it.

“I did mean what I said,” he goes on, quiet again. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“No, I’ll go.” She has to take a breath before she says, “I was actually sort of looking forward to it.”

“Good,” he says, and tightens his fingers around hers.

“But I still don’t understand,” she says. “It’s really not about your parents?”

This time he’s the one to look away. “No,” he answers after a beat. “Not exactly. You’ll understand when we get there, but I—it’s hard to explain.”

“Alright,” she says. She doesn’t like unknowns, but she thinks it’s best to let this one lie. “Just stop being a dick to me.”

“OK,” he agrees and, after another hesitation, adds with a stumble, “I—I’m sorry.”

She shouldn’t be surprised that Batman sucks at apologies.

“It’s OK,” she says, because Catwoman’s not great at accepting them, either, but she can try.

+||+||+

On the train, they’ve barely pulled away from the station when Bruce falls asleep on her shoulder. Selina curls her arm to run her fingers lightly through his hair, and turns the pages of _A Room with a View_ with her other hand.

+||+||+

They have dinner at one of the restaurants nearby—there’s a nice view of the Arno, and the breeze makes the summer night even more pleasant. Bruce doesn’t say much, but at least he’s not antagonizing her, so Selina just enjoys the _carpaccio di pulpo_ and lets him be taciturn. When they get back, he undresses and heads for the shower, and Selina, after thinking it over, joins him. He’s still silent, but he washes her hair with gentle hands and lets her return the favor.

“So when are you going to tell me what this is all about?” she asks as they’re drying off and she’s combing the tangles out of her hair.

He just shakes his head. “Tomorrow,” he says, and takes the bottle of lotion from her hand. She discovered in Berlin that he likes putting it on her.

She sits down on the bed and lets him. He’s characteristically methodical about it, starting with her feet, then her calves and knees, then her thighs and belly, then her breasts and shoulders and arms. When he puts it aside and kisses her, she pulls him back onto the bed, and that’s all they do for a while, kiss, with his hands buried in her damp hair and hers drawing paths from his hips up the length of his spine.

He pulls away, though, and moves down to nudge her legs apart so that he can lick her between them. He’s good with his mouth, good with his fingers, and in a few minutes she’s coming with one leg over his shoulder and one hand pulling desperately at his hair.

She doesn’t mind kissing him after—it’s only polite, and she likes the taste of herself on him like a mark of ownership. Then she turns them, rolls on top of him, and guides his hands unhurriedly but firmly above his head. His body relaxes just a little, and then more when she presses down on his wrists.

She’s learned that his eyes close and his mouth opens in a gasp when she does this, and she watches with satisfaction, then leans down to kiss him again. He smells clean from the shower, and just a little bit like her. She pulls away to bite sharply at his throat—it’ll leave a bruise, which he also likes—and then to slide down over him. He pushes up into her with a groan, and Selina whispers, “Yes, Bruce, that’s good.” Her hair trails over his shoulders, and he struggles for a moment against her grip, but not hard enough to mean it, only enough to make sure she’s actually serious.

She leads them as they move together: she curves her hips down to take him deeper inside her, then up to draw him almost all the way out, then down again. It’s smooth, slick, unhurried, and his eyes open to focus on hers and then close again as he moans low.

She can feel the heat and urgency as he comes, and she follows soon after, long and slow, the kind of orgasm she can feel tingling in her scalp and in her toes. She nuzzles his neck, which is pleasingly sweaty, and lets his hands go. His arms fall around her loosely, and he runs his hands up and down her back. Against her, he feels more relaxed than he’s seemed since they started planning this trip.

As they’re falling asleep, she says, “So am I ever going to learn what this is all about?”

“Tomorrow,” he murmurs, and pulls her closer, and Selina decides to try to be content with that.

+||+||+

They sleep late and come down for a late breakfast, really more of an early lunch. They’re in the lobby when Selina realizes that she forgot to wear her new hat—she almost goes back up to get it, but the sun isn’t too strong and she decides that she’ll wear it later.

She orders a cappuccino and a _crostata_ , and sits back in her chair. It’s warm with just a hint of a breeze, and the sun is gleaming off the serene Arno. The patio café is nearly full, but the atmosphere is convivial; Bruce, though, seems nervous, tapping his fingertips arrhythmically but unceasingly against the tabletop. It’s irritating, and she wants to cover his hand or tell him to stop, but she makes herself be patient. It’s a bit of a new experience for her.

Bruce finally does order a cappuccino as well, and glares at her when she adds to the waiter, _“Decafinato, per favore.”_ She raises an eyebrow at him: she can be patient, but she has not yet learned a level of that virtue sufficient to handle a nervous, overcaffeinated, and cranky Bruce Wayne.

Their cappuccinos arrive, and she focuses mostly on hers until she sees Bruce’s gaze suddenly redirect. She’s got a knife in each boot but it’s been so long since she’s had to use them—

It’s Alfred Pennyworth.

He and Bruce nod to each other—that’s it; nothing more—and then Alfred pays his check and gets up to leave. Bruce watches with intense, almost desperate eyes, but Alfred doesn’t turn around, and finally Selina says quietly, “Why don’t you go after him.”

This breaks the spell somehow, and Bruce looks back down at the pristine tablecloth, at their hands not quite touching. He shakes his head. “No. It’s better this way.”

“Why?” Selina asks, not even mostly sarcastically.

“It’s…We talked about it once. He wants to know I’m OK; I want to know he’s OK. That’s it.”

“Are you?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Bruce says, and he catches her first two fingers with his. “Yeah, I am.”


End file.
